Existing in A Train Wreck
by The-Lotus-Garden
Summary: Red hair, Silver Hair, Aburn hair and that fatal blue. Blindingly bright lights and late nights making love to heroine. This isn't a story about love. This isn't a romance novel. This is a battle with death, madness, and the perfectly dead passion that was romance, that was love
1. Enter: Axel Read:Disaster

Existing in a train wreck.  
Chapter one: Enter Axel (Read: Disaster)  
_By: The Lotus Garden_

My Name is Axel , a year ago I was a freshmen here at the renowned Kingdom University and wouldn't you guess it, in all the creativity my young drug abused brain could muster I was a fucking Philosophy major, Fresh off the farm from a neighbouring town where hypocrisy and homophobia feeds the crops better than the stagnant cow manure they combine into it every fucking year. Trying to explain to the hicks that I'd prefer a city with so much smog I can feel the inhaled cancer in the same way you do cigarettes was about as poignant as trying to explain to them that their precious catholic church was corrupt, and far more 'evil' than their perceived Satan. Just to educate you all a tad: the hype about fresh country air? Its bull shit. there's dead animals on the side of the road, deer carcasses gutted from hunters to lazy to properly dispose of them and fields fertilized with cow shit, Leaving your nose begging to jump off your face and run away in a very Michael Jackson-esque manner.  
Of course, growing up in a town like that, you get all these hopes and dreams, you get the entirely idiotic Idea in your head that the only thing holding you back from showing the world your grand potential is the town limits and the citizens with about as much mental capacity as a gold fish. With this in mind, I managed to scholarship my way into the all to pretentious Kingdom U.  
My reality check came in the form of a few thousand student's with the same basic idea as me, and let me tell you, realizing that you're not special, that you're not some unique snowflake, but you'll melt all the same? Yeah, it's a bigger bitch than my mother's acrylic nails across my face.

Kingdom U had the exterior image of a perfectly crafted Notre Dame knock off, it's only when you've entered the crammed storage room of a dorm that you realize it's not much better than a community college, with one single bed on either side the room, one desk (They assume everyone gets along dandy and everyone passed the 'sharing' segment of preschool) two dressers with four drawers.  
Four fucking drawers, and another (shared) closet.  
Now, this may not seem too bad, but like I said, I was from a farm town, the initial week was culture shock. Pure, unadulterated culture shock.

So here I was, first week of the new semester standing in the middle of my dorm with a half eaten pie in one hand, a fork in the other, shoving my face like I was one of those starved African kids because _holy mary mother of fuck_ it's some good pie. When all of the sudden my roommate(read:Obnoxious) comes flying through the door mouth gaping, eyes wide and chest heaving.  
Enter: Demyx, Music Major, dirty blonde, gayer than the gayest guy to ever get his legs waxed.  
I suppose you could call this…_air head_ my one of my best friends. Best friends in the awkward we-know-nothing-about-each others-pasts-but-drag-one-another-to-every-party sort of way.  
For all his stupidity I'd like to clarify that Demyx is incredibly misinterpreted he's honestly not as 'dumb' as people think him to be, to his credit, he is incredibly observant, and is actually one of the smarter people I've met in my life, it's just he doesn't care.  
What I mean by this, is that he is laid back to a fault, he doesn't use his brain unless he deems it important, like helping someone (Demyx give's out charity like none other. Last year he tried to convince me to let a homeless man sleep in our dorm. Needless to say I said no, and he spent a week giving me the silent treatment laced with the most hilarious glare- glares don't really go with Demyx, which is probably why when he does glare, it's unbelievably disquieting and uncomfortable).

So, There is me, in the middle of the room, mouth open in half-bite of heavenly pie, and Demyx panting like he just ran a marathon, hands fluttering, mouth opening and closing like a fish until he finally spits out "Party at Yuffie's, there's a new kid…he's_ Zexion's_ new roommate"

Now, the amount of exaggeration on the single name 'Zexion' may make you wonder; so let me clarify.  
Zexion (Read: Resident prodigal genius) Has never had a roommate, rumor is (and now I'm not one much for buying rumors, but if you _met_ the guy…) Zexion was once assigned a roommate, like the rest of us back in freshman year, but _apparently_ He marched his ass right down to administration and somehow, with out ever raising his voice (Zexion never raises his voice, and yet manages to be more intimidating that chuck Norris) had the office attendant in tears, and voila, no roommate for Zexion.  
Also, Demyx has the biggest fag-bag crush on Zexion that ever was a fag-bag crush.

Needless to say, Pie was forgotten on the desk, as I pulled on my Doc martin's and pleather jacket (I'm a total carnivore, but I will _never_ wear an animal)

Yuffie was an entity all her own, she owned a town house which, for lack of better words could be called "Party Central". Childish in a way that put five year olds to shame, and so sweet saccharine was jealous, Yuffie was truly one of a kind- or so you would think, until you met her younger brother Sora, I swear her parents fed the children crushed ridilin as sugar in coffee- atleast twelve times a day.  
I see no other explanation for the perpetual chipper nature of those two, Not that I'm complaining, it seemed all my friends were like that- Demyx more subtly, it was a welcome change to my general doom and gloom.

Anyways, Walking into Yuffie's place was always a somehow surreal experience, Opening the door was enough to give you a contact high from the clouds of pot and cigarette smoke, the living area was better stocked with paraphernalia than any head shop I'd ever seen. Yuffie's was a haven for many, with only her living there, she had two spare bedrooms and plenty of couches she would thoughtlessly let anyone crash on. In these walls one could find themselves, although realistically you were probably more likely to lose yourself.  
And that was why I came, to lose myself that is. People always saw me with my shit-eating grin or cocky smirk, it was a complex, whenever I was in a social situation my body went on auto-pilot my thoughts got far away and I simply existed as the obnoxious red headed idiot who liked to light things on fire and get fucked out of his skull with any inebriant handy.  
Well, why let the crowed down?

I left Demyx with a pat on the back aware of how his eyes were already scanning the room for one Zexion, who if in the vicinity would be sitting on the couch, anorexic body taking tokes to put the biggest, stupidest potheads to shame.  
I always found that intriguing, Sure me and Zexion weren't close, but observing him was a hobby of mine for a good month last year. The resident genius was also the biggest fucking stoner I'd ever met. It was perplexing, and seemed somehow contradictory. Anyways, Sure as shit Zexion was there on the couch book in one hand bong in the other.

Satisfied with the knowledge that I could set myself on fire and run around screaming profanity's and I still wouldn't regain Demyx's attention I strutted to the kitchen with all the pride of a lion to take shots like alcoholism was my profession and I was here giving a seminar, I made friendly with the natives, danced with a few girls, grin so big I almost thought I'd tear my face in two.  
Someone pulled me into the bathroom where tidy white lines sat on the sink vanity, a straw and razorblade neatly placed at the side, too me, it was art.  
three rails, a couple joints and fuck knows how many drinks later I was still grinning, still dancing, still laughing.

Two hours later found me on the couch, sandwiching a blushing Demyx between Zexion, Demyx quieter than I'd ever seen him, probably due to embarrassment and the whole 'savouring the moment of brief physical contact with his not-so-loving-lover-boy, I myself so high out of my fucking tree I almost thought I was a tree. If someone was to ask me why I was giggling, I don't think I'd be able to tell them why, just as much because I couldn't produce a coherent sentence as much as because I had no fucking Idea.  
the entire world was just so fucking hilarious, it was hilarious because it was tragic.

One would wonder why I put myself in these situations, and even more would say that the drugs and alcohol was the main problem. But that's total bullshit, it's my fucking right to self medicate, and I do it a damn lot better than the doctor's that did me in for ever have.  
It's not that I got depressed when I got high, it's not that when I drank these feelings bubbled up like lava inside of me, no, it was the opposite actually, it was always like this, like a beast in a corroded cage slamming it's body against the iron bars of my sanity while passerby's just watched pointed and laughed because the cage was manmade, of course the cage wouldn't break. But it did. On a daily basis that beast with blood and drool dripping from its jowls like sap from a fucking pine tree, congealed and sticky and disgusting, that beast would break through and sink its teeth into anything it could find tearing my insides apart like a cheap slut in a shark film and sometimes I liked it. Sometimes I revelled in the sick thoughts and gut wrenching emotional upheaval because I was sick. I was a sick fucking masochist and that's how I found myself painting pictures on my inner thighs in the bathroom, lights flickering and god dammit why has no one fixed that fucking light yet?

Three o'clock in the morning, class in five hours and I'm sitting here carving myself up with an industrial razor blade on the toilet letting the blood drip in thick globs into the porcelain prince that has at some time between my thirteenth birthday and now become my greatest confident. From bulimia to bloodloss the sewage system has seen my worst and with my roommate completely oblivious in the main room sleeping and probably dreaming of the _sound of fucking music_ I once again, like every other night, realize just how alone I really am.

But it's not the drugs that do this to me, it's the running out of drugs, it's the being sober for too long and being alone my entire life and the resentment towards my parents for having me that drives me to this, my shaking hands dropping the piece of metal into the bowl where it makes the softest clink.  
I contemplate pulling it out, but the sight of my now-bloodstained-once-stomach-contents puts me off of the idea, So I flush- twice for good measures, no need to make Demyx disgusted in the morning- and turn the shower nozzle, stepping under the too-hot spray and silently praying my skin will just bubble and melt off. it doesn't, but it won't stop me from dreaming.

I can't specify when it started, because I can't remember- ironic, I can't remember when I stopped being able to remember. I assume it was around puberty, my repressed memories always resurfaced oddly, but day to day life was a blur, day's bled into each other like blood in the trenches mixing with the mud and disease, I couldn't remember for the life of me most of my life.  
I think it was a self defense mechanism.

One thing I do remember, if only vaguely is one day in august when I was eighteen.  
I had just weeks before had my medication switched, I remember how my guardian always put one days worth in the daucet on the kitchen counter, every day faithfully I would swallow my pills. But on that specific day there was a few extra's, So I took them, all of them, along with a cocktail of random pills I had stolen from god knows where, I took them, and The next thing I remember I was in the backyard attempting to stab my leg with a stick, whilst rambling maniacally to the 911 operator.  
I remember it being entirely surreal, me sitting in the drive way as the ambulance backed into the drive, I didn't move, I didn't know what I was supposed to do, it didn't feel real, and I somehow couldn't grasp it. I remember that I didn't think they'd come. I remember being shocked, and somehow appalled when they did show up.

I remember sitting in the back of the ambulance, belted in, chest heaving, breath's fast and quick – an anxiety attack.

"Stop that, you're fine" he was annoyed, the man in the back with me, I remember I wanted to gouge his fucking eyes out, because in his eyes I was just another spoiled brat screaming for attention.  
It's always been like that, from the feinting spells in school, to the slashes across my wrist- everyone thought I wanted attention, even my depraved mother with her acrylic nails and saccharine smile as she introduced me to her friends- in long shirts, even in the blistering heat because she didn't want everyone to see.  
God forbid Jennifer's son was a fuck up.  
God forbid Jennifer's son was a sick, perverse head case.

"This is my son, Axel, You've met him before haven't you?"  
"Oh man, the last time I saw you, you were just a squirt, your hair hasn't changed much has it? Quite the mane you've got there!"  
I think at that point, I wad wondered if my mother had slept with him. I'd always been doubtlessly sure that my mother was that type- the type to use her kids to attract men. I was sure, because I remember countless nights sitting on a nameless man's couch, watching whatever entirely-inappropriate-for-whatever-my-age movie my mother had turned on to keep me from disrupting her as she did god knows what with that man in another room.  
that was my childhood, and yet it took me eighteen years to hate her completely.

Demyx and I had taken to affectionately calling our dorm 'The Purgatory' we even had a hand made sign, designed by moi, hanging outside the door in place of the regulatory dry erase bored. The staff had a bit of a bitch fit about it at first of course, but after having it out with me well- they shut up.

Anyways, our purgatory although having all the regulation furniture was a mess of- on Dem's half band posters and a few framed autographs, and all of his instruments (from guitar too a keyboard, it's amazing we can move at all really) and on my side? Art. My art, Demyx once asked me why I wasn't an art major, and for some reason, that I still cannot understand I replied without hesitation "Art is a philosophy all it's own" and that was that. I'd wondered if I'd read it somewhere, but if I had, Hell If I could remember, and I figure, A quote like that I must be in the right major.

anyways, My art really wasn't anything special, But Demyx enjoyed it- enough to insist I take his half of the regulation desk drawers to keep my art supplies.  
that's another thing about or dorm, I'm pretty sure we are the only fucker's in the school to have a coffee machine on the desk.  
Demyx had actually bought it for me, after the first week of freshman year after realizing that before no less than two cups I could not function as even a sub-sentient being, I ran into walls, tripped over my feet- it was messy.

Now, everyday, there was a pot-o-joe brewed on the desk waiting for me as soon as I woke up. That my friends, is what a best friend does- brew's your ass coffee so you can get out of bed without climbing out of the fifth story building window and free falling into a sea of pavement and pretentious students.

When I awoke the next morning I was sure my arm was dislocated.  
"Axel You fat lard wake _up_"  
Demyx was hollering at me, tugging my arm out of it's socket.  
"Fuck I'm up!"  
I sat up and held out my hand, almost immediately my triple sugar coffee was placed; steaming and wonderful- into my hand, shrugging off demyx's pouty-glare and huff, I smiled my oh-so-real read: sarcastic shit eating glare at my roommate/best friend/fag bag.

"What time is it" I sipped on my coffee, cursing when it burned my tongue and throat.  
"Quarter to eight! We need to go!"  
that we did, and so we did. Despite being separate majors we both shared the same morning class.

The problem with people is that they grow, I thought to myself in class, absently doodling on an empty page in my notebook. I thought, that's why relationships are doomed to fall apart, you meet someone, and who they are then, who they are to you, it changes. Them as a person may not change (I'm a strong believer that people cannot change) but the things they want do.  
I remember a girl in Highschool named Yuna, she was head over heels with this guy in grade nine- His name was Timmy- no, Tidus, that was it. His name was Tidus. He was all sunshine, a real nice guy, he wasn't very smart, but he was noble, I remember that much. Yuna had heterochromia, one eye was green, the other blue, I personally found it beautiful, but humans are worse than vultures. We see something we don't like or something that doesn't fit into societies definition of normal, and we do out damnest to destroy it.

One day, a bunch of jocks (read: oafs) Cornered Yuna on the quad, The details of what happened I couldn't tell you, my recount is just that of highschool rumors. But, I suppose basically what happened is that Tidus stepped in, stood up for Yuna when no one else was. I suppose, a fight broke out because I remember seeing one of the guys notorious for 'bullying' with a broken nose, and Tidus was out of school for a week- suspended.

I guess while he was suspended Yuna went and visited him, to thank him or what have you, because when they came back to school the next Monday they were dating.  
They were happy as can be for two years, Until Tidus was found out to be a blitzball prodigy.

Tidus went from wanting to be a lawyer, (In his head I think he saw himself as being more of a batman than a lawyer) to a professional blitzball player.  
He stopped studying law, and started practicing in all his free time.  
for a while Yuna went and cheered him on, but even me who barely knew them could tell, they started sitting farther apart, Yuna just didn't smile the way she used to.

two weeks later they broke up.  
and I think it was because Tidus grew, changed his mind, and was no longer the person Yuna had known him as, that she had wanted him to be. They didn't coexist anymore. It was like the pangea theory, the world, if pushed back together, probably just wouldn't fit as well as it used to, there would be cracks, and holes and it just wouldn't _fit_.

I think that's also, why I never looked for a relationship, because inevitably, people break up and grow apart, it just seemed pointless.

Weekdays on campus could be considered one of the most utterly mediocre happenings to ever well, happen, Which is probably why I breathed a heavy sigh of relief when Friday night showed me back to Yuffie's not so humble abode bodies writhing, grinding, and by my sixth drink I was one of them.

I thought nothing of the multiple bodies that switched partners like we were doing the fucking dosey-doe, I thought nothing of it, even as a girl-_Sellie? Sally? Selphie._ Took my wrists and lead me up the stairs to one of the spare bedrooms.  
I thought only of how her name reminded me of Sulfur as she pulled my shirt over my head, grinning and giggling.  
I thought of nothing as she crawled on top of me, thumbs hooked into her panties as she swayed her hips, dragging them down slowly off her slightly tanned, blemish-free thighs, thought even less as they were around her ankles, and less still as she crawled on top of me.  
I vaguely wondered if she was too drunk to notice the lacerations on my own body, but it was too hard to think with a sulfur-tongue down your throat. I think it was supposed to be an intimate social nicety to close your eyes when someone was performing such actions with you, but I forgot.  
Even when she was on top of me, my dick deep in her I could only stare at the lights on the ceiling letting off a low glow, a dull glow. Disinterest, disinterest and apathy even with a girl riding me like she was trying to make first place at a rodeo, disinterest and apathy at the obnoxious noises coming out of her parted lips, head thrown back in what must have been mock-ecstasy.

Eventually this got old. Eventually I wondered what I was doing, so I jerked my hips and let out my best groan.  
It was fake. Everything was fake, but she crawled off and I rapidly disposed of the condom so she couldn't tell that I was somehow a sexually inept youth.

She looked at me, this girl like sulfur looked at me dead in the eyes, and with a face that held no emotion, and a voice so completely fucking _normal_ that it took me a moment to process what she had said, she asked me, like it was the most normal fucking thing in the world

"Was it good?" _Was it good..?_  
Was it good? No. no, it was almost fucking painful, but I nodded, and as an afterthought tacked on  
"Yeah, Yeah, it was good." I wondered if my voice sounded as dead to her as it did to me.


	2. Enter: The Train Wreck Read: Memories

Existing in a Train Wreck  
Enter: The Train Wreck  
Read: The Jagged edges of a thousand shattered memories

"_So what if people call you Faery?" He sat on the bench, and I sat by his feet, more content to disrupt pedestrians with my legs stretched out in front me. He nudged me gently with his knee, a small, strange sort of affection. "Didn't you know? Faery's are the most beautiful of all beings. They glow"  
_  
Riku wasn't a faery. Sometimes, when the sun was rising, the light would seem to reflect from his hair, and his hair would sort of glow like it was now, however Riku was not a –_well of course he's not a fairy _what?

It was too early, Axel couldn't make sense of his brain and he couldn't make sense of why Riku was standing there, at eight O'clock in the morning, in his dorm room snarling at him, and he sure as hell couldn't make sense of why he was thinking of him as a god damn faery. Axel grabbed a half empty pack of smokes off the floor beside his bed, writhing his body around in an attempt to fit his hands into his all to tight jean pockets to retrieve his lighter. He absently took in the feeling of self-disgust for a moment, the stench of bong water and what he could only imagine be the unique scent of "_Ke$ha"_ assaulting his only mildly clogged sinuses

Upon further inspection Riku looked tired He looked tired, angry and beautiful. He looked like he'd been kissing heroine, eyes adorned with blood-red intensity around his irises and decorative bruise-like crescent moons underneath them. He'd clearly been up all night, but his body was stiff with rage.

"She was Kairi's cousin you fucking idiot!" Axel jolted at the sound of Riku's voice, inhaling deeply as he lit his cigarette letting it hang from his mouth as his memory stirred up an expressionless brunette that tasted like sulfur, no name came to mind, but she certainly wasn't the sweet slightly tomboyish likes of Kairi's cousin.

"Olette?"

"You slept with Olette too?!" Riku's voice let out in a howl, he threw his arm back, but as if not knowing what to do with it, whether to throw something or beat his friend, his friend who was clearly the most masochistic- he dropped his hand with a sigh, grinding his teeth together in thought

"No." Axel stared a head of him, green eyes dark, getting darker every day. Riku knew. Riku noticed, he's always seen it, it had been growing and growing but it _did not_ give Axel the right to do what he was doing, Riku reminded himself firmly.

"This has to stop. I thought this stopped?" Axel swallowed, his mouth tasting like sulfur, his mouth tasting like something he didn't want to remember.

"You know she was the girl who- Just, fuck Axel, why do you do this?"  
_He was tired because of Kairi, Kairi was upset because of me. again._ Axel recognized this, the thought came clearly to his mind, but nothing stirred, no feeling of remorse, no guilt for hurting a nearly life long friend ship _over and over again._ The only thought he could hold onto was the one reminding him how good his shower felt.  
how good being clean would feel.  
but he'd never be clean again, not really. Blood didn't just wash of your hands.  
Just like empty spaces in your heart don't magically fill.

"You lead people on Axel, you manipulate everyone for your own fucking gain." A bitter taste rose in Axel's throat, he couldn't find the room to care about his long time friends. He knew the people he'd fucked around with had understood- this was what we were doing, I'd use you, you'd use me. Companionship, The necessity of human interaction that's all it was. It had to have been perfectly obvious. He had _made_ it perfectly obvious.  
I love you can be the most deceitful of words.

"could any of them really think I loved them?" he asked, the idea swelling inside of him as he thought back on previous 'relationships' he had been called a number of things at the end of each one, neurotic, psychotic, emotionally retarded, and it was true. He knew that, so he never argued it, and that's why he was suddenly pissed off. suddenly, his body was coursing with fire as he thought back on every single person he had stepped on "Did they really think they could meet my ideals?" Axel chuckled humorlessly, more of a scoff than a laugh, a mockery. "Did they really think I could want them?" His voice faded away tentatively, he squared his jaw and stared at something on the wall that may very well never have existed.

"Even if I feel a small guilt, and sometimes wished it could have been, because I live a lonely life you know?" His lips twitched, eyebrow furrowing as he forced past the instinct of just shutting up. Of just protecting his own as and just leaving, but he swallowed the thick lump in his throat and continued on. "When something traumatic happens, you adapt or you die. I'm not saying I adapted well, but I damn well adapted Riku. I did my fucking best." With that Axel could fight his natural instinct no more he stood abruptly grabbing only his smokes and lighter as he got up and walked past Riku into the bathroom _into safety_ locking the door with a sense of finality that echoed through the small dorm room like a gunshot.  
_bang bang, guns go bang._

Riku left the dorm room with a small guilt, just like Axel's.  
He shouldn't feel guilty, he reasoned with himself, but it was true, Axel was adjusting the best he could. No one lost a loved one and was just fine the next day.  
Every one loved Saix, Saix was a great guy, But Axel and Saix were like a force of there own, they were somehow connected in a way that almost scared Riku.

Having known Axel most of his life, Riku had bore witness to the aftermath of Axel more than once. From bad Relationships, to popping pills like fucking _breath mints_ Riku had seen it all.  
From the bloody _hole_ axel had scratched into his arm one night, looking as if struck by necrosis as it healed, Axel wincing when it pulled the wrong way, but otherwise ignoring it, covering up with a well-worn pair of grey arm warmers.  
Riku had seen it all, and how it was slowed down, to the point of barely existing when the red headed wonder met Saix.

Saix was a great guy, he was nice, funny, and a little quirky. And he did anything Axel wanted of him. At fist Riku had been weary of Saix, coming seemingly out of no where and suddenly Axel was treated like a prince. Axel responded to it the only way that could have been predicted, he took advantage of it.  
Axel was a selfish person but Riku reasoned, that it was with good cause.  
_'when life fucks with you that much, you have to learn to be selfish, because no one else is going to be selfish for you.' _It was the tenth grade when Axel said that, and Riku couldn't help thinking Axel had been talking about his mother.  
But then there was Saix, who was selfish _just_ for Axel. '_he just didn't know how to handle it.' _ Riku thought grimly. But it never effected the couple, when they were together there smiles were the only thing he'd ever seen as bright as the sun.

_Brighter than the florescent lights In the hospital as he stood beside the red head, trying to calmly persuade him to stop _fucking tearing_ as he frantically called for a doctor over his shoulder, blood congealing on the floor._

Axel had been happy, at least for a little while.__

Riku showed up back at his dorm, taking a moment to collect himself before pushing through the unlocked door.

Demyx was sitting on the edge of the bed, hands holding a single picture so delicately, Riku wondered idly why it wasn't floating away like a feather.  
It was an old picture, two summers previous with a disposable camera bought at the corner store.

_Axel, Kairi, Saix and himself sat on the boardwalk by the beach, Kairi, Riku and Saix were using two crates to sit upon, Axel was on the ground, fit snuggly between Saix's legs, Messy wind abused spikes brushing against the older man's shirt as hi lifted his head, poking his foot with a stick.  
Kairi had abandoned her white tank top for her Bikini top, small tan arms reached around Riku in a hug, peace sign sported traditionally.  
And Riku? He was just smiling._

Riku swallowed around the nostalgia and bitter despair that had left residue on his tongue, half a mind to beat this kid- regardless of who he was- for trifling through his shit before the blonde looked up with wet eyes and broke the silence.  
"Kairi told me everything"

With nothing else to do, Riku furthered himself into the room and sat across Demyx.  
But it was quiet now, as if Demyx has wanted to tell him he knew, but not quite knowing the worth of that fact.

"It's not his fault… not entirely. He doesn't mean to, he doesn't think about it, he just does it.  
He just wants that summer back" Riku nodded at the photo in the blondes hand.  
"He wants to smile again" Demyx listened quietly, nodding slowly as if he didn't quiet understand.

"Look, what I'm saying is… when you've been marked with death, it haunts you. "He took a deep breath and continued, feeling liberated to finally being able to say it.  
"For Axel, it's always been hard, he's never… been quite right in the head you know, I mean, he's great, he's funny, but he is so _fucked up_." He licked his lips and continued on trying to relay it the best he could. "some people are born fucked up, and some people get fucked up along the way. Some people who are born fucked up get the displeasure of being fucked up all over again. Axel is one of those people."  
He never bothered looking back at Demyx, just pulling out his cell phone and walking out of the dorm like he'd never came in at all.

He needed to talk to Kairi.

Demyx didn't show back up to the dorm for two days, by which time Axel was sitting on for floor between the beds with one knee held to his chest and the other sprawled out in front of him.  
The entire dormitory reeked of marijuana and his eyes stared unfocused at the art above his bed.  
"What the fuck is wrong with me Dem?"  
"You're high as for one" Demyx grinned. _strained, forced, fake, grin. _ Axel thought, his mind snarling at the thought. Axel stared blankly at Demyx allowing the other boy to wrench him to his feet, _laughing_ as he stressed his happiness, acting oblivious to anything besides _'Damn Ax, how much did you smoke?' _And all Axel could do but to try and do the math before one thought interrupted it all _and now the drinks start.  
_ The blond laughed as he retold a story with over-animated hand gestures.

_Liquid courage, to Sedate the Elephant Axel had said grinning as he swallowed another mouth full of Vodka.  
_

He shook his head and looked to Demyx with a grin.  
"I will buy you _thirty_ shots on your birthday if you shut up and walk faster"

And that was how he found himself on Yuffie's couch yet again, this time trapped between Riku and Demyx, the latter fully engaged in conversation with the Lady of the house herself Leaving Axel to glance tentatively every few moments towards Riku, who was clearly attempting to murder his beer via death-glare-scowl-from-hell.

He wasn't sure if he was tripping out, too paranoid or if Riku was there to babysit him.  
Clearly, he wasn't getting to party-hard himself, and he just trailed the red head all night. granted the red head had simply gone to the kitchen and grabbed a drink before plopping on the couch sprawling out to his entire body covering the vast majority of the couch before realizign that both Riku and Demyx were looking at him expectantly from both sides, from which he shrank his body back so it took up the _appropriate_ amount of couch-space

He knew he'd done too much that night. He had literally smoked himself into oblivion. The undiluted feeling of utter disconnect filled him, he wasn't in university anymore, he was in Riku's house, one year ago.

_Grey walls stared back at him. They used to be a bright aquamarine, but they had to paint over them when Axel had unassumably walked in one day, looked at the wall (there used to be a picture there) and proceeded to walk to the window, and attempt to swan dive out of it. Riku had grabbed him at the last second and pulled him away.) Axel didn't blink, he couldn't blink, his eyes were transfixed on the scene appearing In front of him, just for him. He bit his lip anxiously as he stared back at the painting- (Read: the memory) that had been painted over on the wall.  
in the summer, Riku, Kairi, Axel himself and-  
They were in the process of adding stencils to the bright walls, when Axel decided to do it, quiet stylized, in the end every one got to help.  
the afternoon had been hot, pant legs rolled up inside Riku's room they all worked together chatting amongst themselves, laughter a constant crescendo with in the room as thy decorating the teen's room, at some point Kairi and Riku decided to go get ice coffee for them all.  
Axel had flung a bit a paint at his 'blue haired counterpart' smiling at his work like he hadn't just started what was known as 'paint war: world war Riku' in the bedroom.  
they had made a mess of the place, while Riku left for coffee, Kairi in tow, Axel and-  
They had managed to paint the wall behind them splatters stains and smudges of acid green and golden._

_Axel got another smear of paint on his nose, and that was somehow incentive to shove the other to the floor laughing, straddling hips and heaving chests and before he could really process what was happening it turned into a moment, one of those sickeningly cliché moments from the movies that inclines to people to lean toward each other with melding lips and caresses as light at feathers._

_Love turned into hunger which turned into desperation by the time Axel's pants were sliding down his impossible hips, over his scars, to be discarded haphazardly because it was just something keeping them apart. He needed to be closer, so much closer, because they were one in the same, they were everything and nothing, they were two people who, through the jagged edges of struggle and torment fit together perfectly. Axel was his, and He was Axel's, and that made everything okay. The burning pain, the immense pleasure was perfect, because some how they were perfect. Two people the world looked upon as flawed adolescences screaming to be heard and struggling to find identity. Even if they didn't know who they were, they knew who one another was so fully that even with eyes shuddering in painful bliss they could trace every line, scar and freckle.  
_

_By the time Riku and Kairi came back they were sitting against the wall, Axel between his lover's legs, both leaning back, one hand entwined with another while Axel held a cigarette between his fingers, occasionally lifting it to the others mouth as a pianists hand ran fingers through brilliant red hair._

_Axel blinked hard, throwing himself up in the bed and dragging the messenger bag off the floor and into his lap.  
'Where's Riku..'  
His cell phone revealed no new texts or missed calls, so with a curse he tossed it aside, throwing aside the note books in his bag for the small red pouch with golden emblements adorning it.  
he popped the small latch with ease dropping two white pills under his tongue. It didn't take long for the bitter filmy taste of medical coating to glaze his tongue, he swallowed it easily, accustomed and almost fond of the rancid bitter taste by now.  
Deep in his mind something told him- he knew that this wasn't right.  
Axel didn't care about what was right though, because everything was so wrong. Everything was just so fucked up, so fucked up that instead of spitting out the narcotics, he just flipped the pills inside his mouth with his tongue and began to play with them like fucking hard candies around his mouth even sucking on them now and again, all the while keeping his eyes staring at his hands, the bed, his bag. Anything but that wall, anything but that memory._

__Axel's hands balled into fists as one ragged breath tore through him wracking his rib cage like it really was empty, like he really was empty, just muscle and skin stretched over the canvas of his skeletons, no organs beneath or within the skin, all vital organs missing, or maybe removed.  
He could vaguely make out the feel of Riku's hand on his shoulder, the vibrations of the others voice as it caressed his ear, hot breath spilling over the side of his neck and making him shake because when had it gotten that cold?

With out the command to do so, only his distant recognition that his body was moving through the sea of people, winding and weaving, guided only by that firm, steady yet faint pressure on his shoulder, leading him out into the open air.  
Hands that were his, but didn't feel like it, he didn't remember grabbing the smoke from his pocket, or his lighter he couldn't steady his hand enough to light.  
Riku snatched the lighter, and gently held the flame he created to the red heads face, said red head taking long deep drags off the thing, trying to keep his knee's from giving out and caving in.  
The pale moon was high in the sky illuminating the bodies huddled near the ground.  
The sobs that tore from somewhere deep inside Axel's chest seemed somehow inhuman, animalistic in their deep despair, and Riku could have been mistaken for a romanticized monster, all silver and pale beauty in the moon light, stroking Axel's hair and keeping one arm around him, balancing them both as a low murmur of unintelligible words passed his lips like silk but Axel saw what had haunted and left Riku's eyes dark and tortured.

Were they full of hate?  
did he hate Axel?

He tried to make his tongue move, to ask, but he was too weak, too sick, and his body swayed with the effort of trying to produce coherent thoughts.  
Riku held him up and walked him back to his dorm.  
a heavy weight- _Not as Heavy as it should be, all bones and skin, too thin-_Was nurtured in his arms, supporting and half–dragging the seemingly broken boy back to the safety of his bedroom.

When they arrived Axel darted to the bathroom, and Riku stood outside of it, watching his best friend (The remnants of his best friend) writhe, shake, shiver and convulse on the floor, his lungs gasping for breath as his body worked to expel food and fluids that simply weren't there.

Axel's drug dependency was something Riku had long since given up on curing.  
He wouldn't intervene or bug about it, but when Axel lifted his eyes and they met his own, a brief moment that seemed to last a small eternity _but eternity never lasts as long as it should.  
_In that moment Riku wished for the dull glazed content those pills had given his best friend, he'd thought that was the worst look, at one point.  
nothing could compare to the raw pain in those eyes now.  
Acid green reduced to red-ringed blood shot pain.  
Skin paler than it had a right to be, gaunt, like he himself had died along with his lover that day.

because that's what everything boiled down to.  
Saix. Because Saix was gone, Axel was nothing.  
there was nothing left of Axel, his insides had been scrubbed raw-clean with steal wool. Even his vibrant red hair fell around his face, eccentric spikes reduced to matting, dirty, dying hair,lacking the nutrients it needs to stay beautiful  
Axel was no longer the same kind of beautiful he had once been.

Axel was, for all intents purposes _dead._


End file.
